Former Drive-By Truckers member Isbell heads in another direction

Tuesday

Feb 24, 2009 at 12:01 AMFeb 24, 2009 at 1:46 AM

Former Drive-By Truckers member Jason Isbell returns to T.T. The Bear’s Place in Cambridge Tuesday night with his new band, 400 Unit.

A song like "No Choice in the Matter,'' a heavy, horn-studded soul ballad off Jason Isbell’s new album, is a reminder of what a tender songwriting talent the Drive-By Truckers lost when the band and Isbell parted ways in April 2007.

But as both Isbell and the Truckers would be more than happy to point out – likely for the hundredth time – the past is the past. And Isbell is now two albums deep with his 400 Unit, a valiant and exciting rock outfit that blends soul, alt-country, rock and R&B.

"I’m bothered by any question I’ve heard 1,000 times, but I’m not bothered by people asking me about that time because I was really happy with the work we did, for the most part, and I don’t mind thinking about that stuff,'' Isbell said, referring to his six-year tenure as a Trucker. "I just don’t want it to be a situation where that was the most important thing that I ever do. Honestly, I don’t think that’s going to happen – I’ll continue to make music and continue to do the things I do now. But this album will help lead that in the right direction, simply because there’s nothing on this album that sounds like a Truckers song. And I plan on continuing in that vein, not to isolate myself from the Truckers sound but just because I’m more interested in other things.''

Isbell and his 400 Unit – a crack band comprised of three Alabama natives, bassist Jimbo Hart, guitarist Browan Lollar, and most recent recruit, drummer Chad Gamble, and a Baltimore transplant and former Son Volt sideman, keyboardist Derry DeBorja – return to T.T. The Bear’s Place in Cambridge tonight.

Towing a healthy catalog of Isbell originals and a few stray covers already, the band will also draw on the entire new album, which apart from being on a short list for one of the year’s best is perhaps most fascinating for the way Isbell mines familiar themes – traumatized soldiers, hardscrabble upbringings, barstool philosophers, relationships that turn bad and break down worse – and wrings excitement, emotion and new resonance out of them.

It’s something he did for years with the Truckers, and not a talent to take lightly – the more you indulge his songs, from the resignedly angry "No Choice In the Matter'' to the defiant "However Long'' to the ominous "Soldiers Get Strange,'' the more they push back and get under your skin. Well-chosen collaborators – among them Centro-matic’s Matt Pence, who co-produced, engineered and played drums on the album – fill in the rest.
"We’re mostly a band of sculptors,'' Isbell offers. "We’re a couple different kinds of players, but we’re all people who like to start with a lot and sculpt away til they get to what’s at the center of a part or song. We’re also people who like to build from the ground up. I like that. It’s something that makes for an easy and direct communication between me and the other guys.''

His own songwriting techniques, Isbell said, haven’t changed all that much, but he’s learned to take his time.

"I feel like I’m getting a little bit better at refining,'' he said. "There are fewer lines on this album that make me cringe, I guess. [Laughs] If I’m in a bar with a bunch of other people and my songs are playing, normally that really bothers me, but this one’s a lot easier to listen to. I spend a little more time on songs than I used to, and I’m getting better at production for sure – I know how to get certain sounds.''

The characters in his songs aren’t fantasy constructions, either, which suggests why they sound for the most part so fully realized.

"I do try to attack ’em from different angles. Rather than try to tell a specific story in a linear way like I often did with the Truckers, I think it serves a purpose to mix and match and put different characteristics in songs,'' Isbell explained.

"It’s more interesting to me if you build a Frankenstein’s monster out of different people you know and stories you’ve heard. But every line on the album is something that happened to me, or something I heard about.''

The Patriot Ledger

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